Brookland (18 page)

She knew it meant something was wrong with her that her first thought was to imagine bleary-eyed workers toiling through the night. On this idea's heels came a more logical possibility: “Expand the works?”

He set the pot down on the stove. “Exactly so. Let me show you.” He riffled through the loose papers on the desk and extracted a sheet covered with boxes and squiggles representing the distillery and the river. He placed it before Prue and leaned down over her shoulder. “Your father believes we can cut the end wall clear from each of the buildings”—here he took up a pencil and indicated this—“build them out longer, and move those farthest down the production line north, toward the ropewalk. It'll require quite a bit of horsepower, but we'll be able to save some of the foundations, which were what required the most work when we built the distillery.”

Prue thought about watching the laborers dig the cellar pit for the rectory, and didn't recall it requiring more work than any other task. Israel sat down beside her, in her father's chair. “With such sandy ground, you see,” he went on, “it's hard to keep a building plumb. The ropewalk sinks more than an inch a year in its northwest corner, which is why you always
see the workmen out shoring it up. When your father and I built these buildings, we drove piles as deep as we could into the sand and lay great, flat foundation stones atop them, solid enough for the buildings to rest upon. They've held up well; we'll use the same method. Will you help us draw up the plan?”

“I can't draw,” Prue said.

“Mmm.” Israel looked at his sketch of the distillery. “Nor can I. But it'll look better once your father puts his hand to it. In the meanwhile, you can help us decide by what degree we should increase each stage of production. It's a tricky issue, as it involves not only the space but the machinery, men, and the time it takes to work each part of the process.” The coffee had begun to boil, and he removed it from the stove and poured it out. “One thing more, Prue.”

She took the cup and broke off some sugar, keeping her eyes on him.

“If a certain young man of our acquaintance ever does aught to make you look so pale, I'll beat him senseless.”

Prue smiled, despite her exhaustion. The gentle way Israel was watching her showed her he knew he'd hit the mark, but she felt less discomfited by this than she had a moment before. She was also pleased at the prospect of redesigning the works; she loved having a problem to think through.

Her father had filed away the measurements of all the buildings twenty years before, but Israel borrowed the carpenter's Gunter's chain, and he and Prue stalked the property, deciding exactly how far each house could extend without the whole works encroaching upon the ropewalk. Israel ordered new foundation stones from a quarry up in Wilbur that could ship the stones down along the Hudson. When Tem discovered that Prue had been released indefinitely from her ordinary labor, she pouted and yelled as if she might thus be excused from her studies; but their father was firm and made her keep on in the cashing house, no matter how unpleasant she made herself to the foreman. Ben and Isaiah gave themselves leave to quit Mr. Severn's school—from which, they argued, they would both graduate anyway, come spring—and volunteered themselves for any opportunity to assist in the measuring. Israel Horsfield was furious with them when first he saw them loose in the middle of the day, but Isaiah assured him the study of building would serve him at least as well as the Lucretius with which Mr. Severn was torturing them. After
two days, Israel himself wrote Mr. Severn asking for his sons to be excused while business demanded it. Cornelis Luquer cursed his apprenticeship at the grain mill—but for learning his father's business, he would have been free to participate in the first engineering project of any size in the neighborhood, and he complained to Prue of his jealousy at every turn.

For two weeks, Prue, Ben, and Isaiah argued with their fathers over the best spacing of the buildings for ease of production, and over the best method for constructing walkways above the various production rooms. Prue's own design—for simple balconies, with railings to prevent mishap—won the day, and looked well enough indeed when her father worked up a detailed drawing, including all the measurements necessary to build them. Ben and Isaiah wanted to stay on and assist in the ditch-digging and carpentry, but when the plans were complete and the workers apprised of them, Prue's friends were sent back to school.

At that time, in the spring of 1790, the distillery employed nearly sixty men and had four horses in its stables. No one part of the manufactory could function while the others lay dormant, and Roxana Winship began predicting ruin before the work even began. But it had been Tem's idea—Prue wished it had been her own—to increase production before the works shut down so the storehouses would be full when the building commenced; and with so many laborers, the digging and construction proceeded quickly. Prue and Tem learned how heavy even a spadeful of sand could be by the end of a day, and the kind of concentration two men needed not to injure each other with a double-handled saw; and their industry was matched by the workers', each of whom, slaves included, had been promised a pound sterling if the work was completed by summer. When the foundation stones arrived by barge from Wilbur, Matty Winship and Israel Horsfield bartered with farmers from Red Hook to Wallabout for the loan of their oxen; and Prue thrilled at the commotion when six teams of the snorting beasts labored to drag the huge slabs over logs laid down on the sand. Matty Winship had ordered the new cauldrons and stills from England before the work began, and had men building the new mash tuns before the brewhouse was even complete. By the time the rectifying room was under way, he was calling on the Remsens and Cortelyous to find out how much grain he could buy of them, and at what cost. Before it arrived, he advertised in the New York
papers for more men; “For, dammit,” he told Prue, as they stood atop two ladders, fastening a leather drive belt around one of the new drums, “before I die, I shall see you have more than a hundred
employés
to supervise.”

“But you aren't going to die,” she said. Both the leather and the lumber still smelled fresh and sweet.

He made a plosive sound of disdain through his lips. “Of course I shall, Prue. So will you. All we can both hope is that it'll happen a good ways in the future. And I imagine it will. If Death fancied our house, after all, he'd long since have come for Johanna.” They were ten feet apart, but he could see her face and added, “Don't look so glum, now. I thought I'd have done with that expression when I let you come work with me.”

“You did,” she said. “You shall.” She tried to remind herself of her pride in her walkways, which were sturdy if not beautiful. But work well done could not prevent her from wondering what would happen if her father fell off the ladder right then.

He did not wait to complete the new storehouses before resuming production; if the liquor had to go into the assembly hall, this would be only for a short while, and the distillery fell further behind on its orders each day that passed. Twenty men would keep on building, but the second Monday in June, the brewhouse would reopen. In celebration of the event, Matty brought a cask of the previous year's wares out into the yard one afternoon, tapped it, and gave every worker his dram. Prue saw the four lazy boys in Joe Loosely's employ slip into the line, and felt tempted to warn her father; but when it came their turn, he gave each of them a wink with his sup of gin, and sent him back up to the ferry.

Ben and Isaiah left off their studies again for a few hours, to view the completed work and take part in the festivities. “You've grown taller from the work,” Isaiah told Prue.

“Meatier, too,” Ben said.

Prue swatted at him, but Ben was already running into the brewhouse, where he began clambering up the side of a new tun. “Ho!” he called as he looked over the top. “It's as big as the Luquers' swimming hole! Can I go in?”

“Don't,” Prue said. “We'll have to drop a ladder in to get you back out.” She wanted to add that, at seventeen, he ought to have been able to comport himself better.

He commenced galloping around the platform at the tun's perimeter. She was sure he'd pitch into the tank or to the ground and break his neck.

Isaiah walked more gravely around and between the giant tuns. “The whole operation's stark admirable,” he said. “And you were correct about the walkways. They've come out well.”

“Thank you.”

Ben stopped and sat down, his legs dangling over the platform's edge. “Has Pearlie seen this?”

“No.”

“Why not?” he asked. “She'd be interested. Let me go get her,” he offered, and was about to jump off the edge of the platform to the ground when Prue called, “Don't! Use the ramp.” He sneered at her, but did as she said.

Prue herself ran up Joralemon's Lane, and found the house quiet and her mother staring at the grain in the wood of the kitchen table, her eyes red. She did not look up when Prue pulled the door closed by its latch.

“Mum?” Prue asked. “Will you come down and see what we've done at the works?” When her mother didn't respond, she asked, “What's the matter?”

Roxana sighed, lifting her collarbones halfway to her chin. “Johanna fares poorly,” she whispered. “Pearl is sitting by her.”

Prue walked softly into Johanna's bedroom and noticed, for the first time, a sweet stench, like attar of violets. Pearl looked up from her chair by the bedside. Johanna's breath rasped like a wood plane, and she was pawing in her sleep at the gruesome tumor, close by the spot she had always touched when Tem or Prue vexed her. Pearl fixed her needle in her embroidery and looked anxiously up at her sister's face.

Prue did not know what to say. After a moment Pearl opened her pad and wrote,
I'm worrit'd about her. Surely this is her Last End?

Prue watched Johanna's breast rise and fall. “I'm not certain, Pearl; she's looked dreadful before and pulled through. We should call for the doctor.” Prue left the door open behind her as she returned to the kitchen. “If you come down to the distillery with me, you'll be halfway to Dr. de Bouton's. He'll come.”

Roxana continued to look at the table. “You've never liked Johanna.” Prue did not know how to answer her. Roxana closed her eyes a moment and licked her lips. “Your father got on well in this village from the start,
but the womenfolk of Brookland have never had much to do with me. I'm not like them, I suppose.” She smiled wanly, Prue thought to let her know it was no use denying it. “Johanna has never asked me to be other than what I am. It pains me to contemplate losing her.”

Prue could not help thinking Johanna was a slave and had had little choice in the matter; she could befriend or antagonize her mistress, but not escape her. But Prue said only, “We'll fetch the doctor for her. Please come see what we've done, down at the works.”

Roxana continued to give her the sad half smile. “Your father's proud.”

Pearl came in from the sickroom with her tambour frame in one hand.

“Come tour the new buildings,” Prue said.

Pearl put the embroidery on the table and wrote,
W
^th
Jo
^a
unwell?

“A brief tour.”

Moth
^r
coming?

“I don't think so,” Prue said.

Pearl frowned and wrote a note to her mother. Prue looked over her sister's shoulder, and saw the note said,
Come it
^s
importint to her
.

“And to Father and Tem,” Prue added.

“What of Johanna?” their mother asked.

Pearl wrote,
She wo'n't stir & we'll be back immediatly
.

Roxana stood as if it cost her some effort, and tucked a loose wisp of hair behind her ear. Then she smiled at her daughters in earnest.

Down below, many of the men had gone back to work on the storehouses, but the foremen were still standing around with their cups, and Ben and Isaiah were among them. Matty's face lit up when he saw his wife. “Hoy, Roxy,” he said, and put his arm out for her.

She leaned her head toward his shoulder. “Johanna's ill,” she said.

“How so?”

“Abed and breathing poorly. I'm on my way to fetch de Bouton.”

He nodded, but the news did not appear to have dispelled his good mood.

“Quite a lot you've done here,” Roxana said.

Pearl bent and straightened her knees a few times in eagerness to get on with her visit.

“Poor thing,” said John Putnam, the brewmaster. “Wish I had a sweet for ye.”

Pearl kept bouncing as if she hadn't heard him, but the expression of delight had hardened on her features.

“I'll show her around,” Ben said, pouncing on her from behind. She pitched forward happily; she was tiny for twelve years old, and no one ever roughhoused her.

“There's so much to show you,” Matty said, and kissed Roxana's forehead.

She didn't shrug free of him, but neither did she soften into his embrace, as Prue had often seen her do. “Delightful,” she said. “I'll be delighted to know what's been keeping you from home all these months. If, indeed, this manufactory be the culprit.”

One of the foremen whistled through his teeth, and Ben whisked Pearl off toward the brewhouse. “It is,” Prue said, and watched her mother color.

“You don't even know what I speak of” she said.

“I can see by her countenance she does,” Matty said, and laughed to himself. “Come. You need to fetch the doctor and it's high time Prue and I got back to work. Let's have our look round and be through.”

When they arrived at the new cooling house, Pearl drew in her breath in delight. She stepped out onto the lattice of planks and strode to the middle of the room. “It is lovely, isn't it?” Prue said.